Search engines (e.g., web based search engines provided by various vendors, including, for example, Google, Microsoft's Bing, and Yahoo) provide for searches of online information that includes searchable content (e.g., digitally stored electronic data), such as searchable content available via the World Wide Web (WWW). As input, a search engine typically receives a search query (e.g., query input including one or more terms, such as keywords, by a user of the search engine). The search engine performs the search for the search query and outputs results that are typically presented in a ranked list, often referred to as search results or hits (e.g., links or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for one or more web pages and/or web sites). The search results can include web pages, images, audio, video, database results, directory results, information and other types of data.
Search engines typically provide paid search results (e.g., the first three results in the main listing and/or results often presented in a separate listing on the right side of the output screen). For example, advertisers may pay for placement in such paid search results based on keywords (e.g., keywords in search queries). Search engines also typically provide organic search results, also referred to as natural search results. Organic search results are based on various algorithms employed by different search engines that attempt to provide relevant search results based on a received search query.
For improved Internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) has developed as a form of industry/technical consulting (often referred to as search engine optimizers) provided to web site operators (e.g., vendors of products/services with web sites and/or e-commerce vendors of products/services) for improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from a search engine via organic search results (e.g., to improve the web site's web presence as a paid service engagement or pursuant to a marketing campaign). Generally, the higher a web site appears in the organic search results list, the more users it will receive from the search engine. SEO can target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry specific, vertical search engines to improve the web site's web presence. For example, SEO often considers how search engines work and what people search for to recommend web site related changes to optimize a web site (e.g., which primarily involves editing its content and HyperText Markup Language (HTML) coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines).